In football, the coach will give you the nod and, boom, you're in the game. In my life, it's usually less of a dramatic scenario. The other night, I got the nod.
We've been attending Aspen Grove for about 6 months and we're totalling digging it. The Holy Spirit has been kind of thumping us a little to get more involved...and we've been cautiously listening. Luckily, Scott Wenig (most excellent pastor dude) met with us early on and we told him that we were completely toast after all the heavy involvement that Mosaic required (especially towards the end). He was totally cool and encouraged us to "sit in the back and enjoy, the Spirit will let you know when you're ready". Awesome!
The church is planning a split to two services starting in August and they've done a good job of nudging everyone to know that it's a lot of work and they could use some extra hands. Set up, tear down, children's ministry, sound/AV type of stuff. So we'd been listening....
We're at the church picnic last Saturday and over bops Scott and we exchange pleasantries. Then he pops the question like this:
Of course, Kristie's and my radar went to full alert. He then proceeded to tell us all about the history of the church's web effort and how things are not working out so well. Kristie and I exchanged knowing glances, the kind only long-time partners understand. The side of her mouth curled into that little smile when he told us about their concern that the current guy is feeling that he's too big for their meager little web site and that his timeliness isn't very...timely. We had this exact conversation with the president of the school about 3 years ago. So after a couple more tid bits, I interrupted and said:
Kristie and I both remember the utter debacle that was my involvement with the Mosaic web site. Not only did they not have any idea what they wanted, they had no ownership in getting me any content. I always defer to this position: if you need someone to drum up your content, look somewhere else. If you know what you want it to say and you can provide some directions as to where it should be said, let's talk. The school is somewhat okay there. I've had to numerous times bounce requests back with instructions like "looks neat, now where should it go and how should the users get there?". The school's web site was put together by some consultant who got paid "big bucks" (in school money) and I'm sure they nickel and dimed him to death. To the point that he simply said enough. I'm not going to make any more changes unless I can invoice you for it. Either that, or you'll have to find another "sucker" to do this for you for free. Enter me. So I've spent the last 3 years, tweaking bits of HTML, slapping in entire new sections and generally working on a web site that I truly think is low quality. I've even made plans and introduced them to completely overhaul the site, but I know it would be too radical and in the end, I'd have to do it all myself. So it's still the original, nasty web site that it's always been. But the church's, now that's something different....
Their site appears to be in pretty good shape, uses the Prototype javascript library, has a little Flash and all in all seems okay. According to Scott, all they want is someone to actually implement the changes, and not necessarily dream them up. We'll see on that. So sometime in the next few weeks, we're going to meet and I'll get the full rundown. I'm certain that I won't keep my mouth shut and introduce ideas like a datadriven calendar, document repository, user-submitted and managed content.....
And then, I'll be back in the game.
We've been attending Aspen Grove for about 6 months and we're totalling digging it. The Holy Spirit has been kind of thumping us a little to get more involved...and we've been cautiously listening. Luckily, Scott Wenig (most excellent pastor dude) met with us early on and we told him that we were completely toast after all the heavy involvement that Mosaic required (especially towards the end). He was totally cool and encouraged us to "sit in the back and enjoy, the Spirit will let you know when you're ready". Awesome!
The church is planning a split to two services starting in August and they've done a good job of nudging everyone to know that it's a lot of work and they could use some extra hands. Set up, tear down, children's ministry, sound/AV type of stuff. So we'd been listening....
We're at the church picnic last Saturday and over bops Scott and we exchange pleasantries. Then he pops the question like this:
Do you mind if I ask you a professional question?
Of course, Kristie's and my radar went to full alert. He then proceeded to tell us all about the history of the church's web effort and how things are not working out so well. Kristie and I exchanged knowing glances, the kind only long-time partners understand. The side of her mouth curled into that little smile when he told us about their concern that the current guy is feeling that he's too big for their meager little web site and that his timeliness isn't very...timely. We had this exact conversation with the president of the school about 3 years ago. So after a couple more tid bits, I interrupted and said:
Sure I'll help. I'll be glad too.
Kristie and I both remember the utter debacle that was my involvement with the Mosaic web site. Not only did they not have any idea what they wanted, they had no ownership in getting me any content. I always defer to this position: if you need someone to drum up your content, look somewhere else. If you know what you want it to say and you can provide some directions as to where it should be said, let's talk. The school is somewhat okay there. I've had to numerous times bounce requests back with instructions like "looks neat, now where should it go and how should the users get there?". The school's web site was put together by some consultant who got paid "big bucks" (in school money) and I'm sure they nickel and dimed him to death. To the point that he simply said enough. I'm not going to make any more changes unless I can invoice you for it. Either that, or you'll have to find another "sucker" to do this for you for free. Enter me. So I've spent the last 3 years, tweaking bits of HTML, slapping in entire new sections and generally working on a web site that I truly think is low quality. I've even made plans and introduced them to completely overhaul the site, but I know it would be too radical and in the end, I'd have to do it all myself. So it's still the original, nasty web site that it's always been. But the church's, now that's something different....
Their site appears to be in pretty good shape, uses the Prototype javascript library, has a little Flash and all in all seems okay. According to Scott, all they want is someone to actually implement the changes, and not necessarily dream them up. We'll see on that. So sometime in the next few weeks, we're going to meet and I'll get the full rundown. I'm certain that I won't keep my mouth shut and introduce ideas like a datadriven calendar, document repository, user-submitted and managed content.....
And then, I'll be back in the game.